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The Shepherd and the Star - Part XII
The girl blinked as the hologram sank silent, and looked to the floor as she started to channel this information through her intellect. She considered how far she had crawled through the ventilation to reach this hidden chamber, and judged that this spaceship must indeed be huge in size. So many questions sparkled from her thoughts...Why would there be only one crewmember on a vessel of this size? How could she have lived for so long, and why would she dare to in the cold and darkness of deep space? What was so important to her about this ship, and where was it headed? What did the hologram mean when it said ‘estimated arrival time’ and ‘estimated battle time’? What did the hologram mean when it said ‘The Chosen is dead’? There were no immediate answers, but at least now she had some posture on her situation. The girl tucked her hands beneath her stretched sleeves and sat for a moment, just as the hologram returned with a final message. *‘Before you begin, human, this unit would like to state that Eve’s body will most likely contain a mark on her arm. This mark, the mark of her kin,’ Eve’s likeness confirmed and dissolved into a circular emblem. The girl had seen it once before, when she woke up. It was engraved into the wall she recalled ‘this is the emblem of Rassilon. If you find a corpse with this tattooed onto them, then it will most likely be Eve. This machine requires you to accelerate; more intruders have cut open the skin and are working their way inside. See you.’ The machine then shut down as the ceiling lights came into effect. The chamber was small, which was probably why it felt warmer than the others. There were tables and chairs lined up carefully together in one corner of the room and a desk in other whilst the holographic projection unit was in the room’s centre, latent. The girl stood and moved over to the sealed hatch across from her, before she paused and noticed a small pistol resting on the desk beside a pile of datapads and holodisks. It took her a moment, but she ultimately ignored them all and returned her sight to the hatch. She was compelled to seek out Eve. She needed answers. She clutched the handle of the hatch tightly, and then shifted it open. --- The Commander descended into a dim antechamber by a rope, having just cut her way into the top of the craft with help from the other agents. She tapped softly against the floor, clicked on the torch above her pistol’s tiny cannon and used it to carry out a quick scan of the area. It was completely black at first, but the crimson light of her visor remitted a bright cherry effect across the arctic airwaves. She detached the rope and stepped away as it was pulled back up through the burnt gap high up in the ceiling, and as she watched it go she couldn’t help but notice the dusty orbs built into the elliptical wall which enclosed the entirety of the oval-shaped room. Jumbled cables hung chaotically from the roof, and waved gently as she heard some of the lower decks creak and groan at her arrival. *‘Alright, it’s clear.’ She whispered into her helmet radio as she loomed over to the wall and touched one of the small globes. She wiped away some of the dust and focused her visor light on the material, but even then she couldn’t tell what it was. The rope dropped down again, this time with the male agent at the end, the one who had supported her back aboard the Morning Star. He reacted in the same slow, concentrated manner that she did as he tapped against the ground before he detached the rope too. His eyes met hers again after he stepped away from the chamber’s centre. *‘By the way, Commander-...’ he began, only to have her look away and throw her absorption elsewhere. *‘-I know. I know who you are, what rank you are anyway. Us agents, we’re the nameless. A bit like this ship actually, I couldn’t see a nameplate outside, but even if I did I’m guessing that the words would have been burnt off by time. We’re all nameless now.’ She smiled ‘But your designation is Captain, right?’ *‘...That’s what I was just going to mention,’ he said as the rope slipped back up through the gap ‘those implants in your head, they’re all wrong. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out.’ *‘When did you know?’ she asked but didn’t face him, instead she mused over the orbs on the wall as he ran her finger down another. There was no surprise in her tone. *‘...As soon as we lost the Morning Star and the others. I knew something was up when I realised that the Agency wouldn’t sacrifice its best agents for something that may not be real,’ he explained ‘and that vision we all shared when we boarded that freighter...That’s not normal.’ *‘...The vision we shared in the hangar was a dream I’ve been having recently, ever since my neural network became corrupted. The same hallway, the same dusty floor, the same ancient symbols engraved across those walls. My neural implants needed to update a long while ago but I never went for it. I guess the technology evolved a bit since then. My bet is that the Agency put the update programme in place to prevent this kind of thing from ever occurring. You should take me back.’ *‘I should, but you know I won’t. You got us here. That is more than I could’ve done.’ The Captain confessed as he approached ‘But you compromised all of us when you allowed that idiot back on the Morning Star to give us all updates with you still in the vicinity. It could’ve been a lot worse.’ *‘And you want an apology? That was his stupid fault,’ she shot at him an adamant glare than stopped him in his tracks ‘something’s obviously gone wrong, but it’s not just happened. The system is wrong. The General’s right, Captain, but her intentions aren’t. No matter what happens, the Agency is going to be destroyed.’ One of the other agents dropped down from the rope, leaving one more still to arrive. The agent, a young female, detached it and stepped back too before she suddenly pulled out her sidearm. A flaming bullet smashed open her visor and threw her corpse to the ground, just as the last agent dropped down and met a similar fate. The boom of both shots echoed out of the antechamber, and the ship screeched from down below. The Commander raised her pistol and pointed it to the origin of the violence, but the Captain merely thrust his weapon back into his holster. *‘What are you doing?!’ she yelled, and targeted his head. *‘They were planning to kill you,’ he said calmly ‘I couldn’t allow that.’ *‘What?’ she said, completely startled by his erratic sense of resolve. *‘I overheard them back on the Morning Star-...’ he started. *‘-Things have changed since then! We lost everything just getting here-...’ she exclaimed and kept her pistol aimed. *‘-They had their own purpose. We have ours! I thought and thought on the journey here, that’s all I did. I started to feel things for the first time... That vision did something to my neural network too! When I saw you come into the hangar just after, I knew it meant that you would keep your word. The system is wrong, but the General cannot be allowed to use this ship. We need to stop her, together.’ He defied her argument ‘As soon as my neural network corrupted in that moment, I saw the world the Agency had denied me. I saw the people I had killed and what their lives could have been. I saw a world where I could have been something more. I want us to get this right. We’re going to get this right. So Commander what will you do?’ The pause after was long, uncomfortable and it took the Commander a few moments to gather back her line of thoughts. She felt her pistol lower itself. * ‘I’m with you.’ He said ‘So let’s do this.’ in Part XIII